(Press-News.org) Have you ever touched someone else and wondered why his or her skin felt so incredibly soft? Well, now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 10 present evidence that this experience may often be an illusion.
In a series of studies led by Aikaterini Fotopoulou of the University College London, participants consistently rated the skin of another person as being softer than their own, whether or not it really was softer. The researchers suggest that this phenomenon may exist to ensure that humans are motivated to build social bonds through touch.
"What is intriguing about the illusion is its specificity," says Antje Gentsch, also of the University College London. "We found the illusion to be strongest when the stroking was applied intentionally and according to the optimal properties of the specialized system in the skin for receiving affective touch."
This system typically responds to slow, gentle stroking found in intimate relationships and encodes the pleasure of touch, Gentsch explains. In other words, this "social softness illusion" in the mind of the touch-giver is selective to the body parts and the stroking speeds that are most likely to elicit pleasure in the receiver.
"The illusion reveals a largely automatic and unconscious mechanism by which 'giving pleasure is receiving pleasure' in the touch domain," Fotopoulou says.
In fact, social touch plays a powerful role in human life, from infancy to old age, with beneficial effects on physical and mental health. Many studies have focused on the benefits of touch for the person receiving it. For instance, premature infants benefit greatly from time spent in direct physical contact with their mothers. Yet, Fotopoulou and her colleagues say, remarkably little is known about the psychological benefits of actively touching others.
Earlier studies showed that softness and smoothness stimulate parts of the brain associated with emotion and reward. Therefore, this "illusion" that other people are softer ensures that reaching out and touching another person comes as its own reward.
This rewarding illusion acts as a kind of "social glue," bonding people to each other. For example, touching a baby in a gentle manner seems to give the mother tactile pleasure, the researchers say, over and above any other thoughts or feelings the mother may have in the moment.
Fotopoulou says the next step is to examine the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in giving affective touch. They are also curious to examine any differences that may exist in the experience of this softness illusion among partners, friends, and strangers.
INFORMATION:
The work was supported by the European Research Council.
Current Biology, Gentsch et al.: "Active Interpersonal Touch Gives Rise to the Social Softness Illusion" http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.07.049
Current Biology, published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. For more information please visit http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive media alerts for Current Biology or other Cell Press journals, contact press@cell.com.
Those of you who spend hours at the gym with the aim of burning as many calories as possible may be disappointed to learn that all the while your nervous system is subconsciously working against you. Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 10 have found that our nervous systems are remarkably adept in changing the way we move so as to expend the least amount of energy possible. In other words, humans are wired for laziness.
The findings, which were made by studying the energetic costs of walking, likely apply to most of our movements, ...
For patients and clinicians alike, it's long been a mystery: why do symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) seem to get better in the winter and worse in the summer? A group led by Francisco Quintana, PhD, at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and collaborators have found an explanation that could lead to a deeper understanding of the disease and more targeted treatment options for patients. By first looking broadly at possible environmental factors and then deeply at preclinical models of MS, the research team found that melatonin ...
The face of a chimpanzee is decidedly different from that of a human, despite the fact that the apes are our nearest relative in the primate tree. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have begun to pinpoint how those structural differences could arise in two species with nearly identical genetic backgrounds.
The key lies in how genes involved in facial development and human facial diversity are regulated -- how much, when and where the genes are expressed-- rather than dissimilarities among the genes themselves. In particular, the researchers ...
NEW YORK, NY - A timed vision test that involves rapidly reading numbers off of cards can be a valuable sideline tool for detecting whether a concussion occurred while playing sports, according to a meta-analysis and systematic review led by NYU Langone Medical Center concussion specialists.
Researchers at the NYU Langone Concussion Center reviewed studies that involved athletes who sustained a concussion during sporting activities and found the vision test, known as the King-Devick test, was 86 percent sensitive in detecting whether a concussion had occurred, as confirmed ...
HOUSTON -- (Sept. 10, 2015) - "Help us find others like Tess." Bo Bigelow's plea jumps off the page of his blog, echoing across the continent from his leafy green home city of Portland, Maine.
When he posted his call to action, all he knew was that his young daughter has a mutation in her USP7 gene and that she has global developmental delay, hip dysplasia and visual impairment caused by her brain (not a problem in her eyes themselves) among other health issues. An article in the New Yorker magazine by Seth Mnookin gave him hope that finding other children with the same ...
Cancer cells commonly rely on glycolysis, the type of metabolism that does not use oxygen to generate their energy however, researchers from Queen Mary University of London's Barts Cancer Institute and the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) in Madrid have now found that not all cancer cells are alike when it comes to metabolism.
PancSCs can make use of a more efficient form of metabolism, called oxidative phosphorylation or OXPHOS, which does use oxygen. OXPHOS uses a part of the cell called mitochondria and it is this which can be targeted with anti-diabetic ...
Targeting exhausted immune cells may change the prognosis for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) relapse after a stem cell transplant, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.
There is currently no effective treatment for this stage of leukemia, and patients have only a 5 percent chance of survival over five years.
AML is a fast-moving cancer of the blood and bone marrow. In patients with AML, the bone marrow produces abnormal white or red blood cells or platelets. Powerful rounds of chemotherapy can damage bone marrow, so many patients are given ...
While it is known that the incidence and outward symptoms of schizophrenia are strongly influenced by ethnic factors--for instance, patients from Asian ethnicities are more likely to experience visual hallucinations, whereas patients from western cultures and Caucasian ethnicities are more likely to suffer from auditory hallucinations--it was unclear if brain deficits would differ amongst suffers from various ethnic backgrounds. Previous research had indicated that there were neuroanatomical signatures for schizophrenia, but a study titled, "A Neuroanatomical Signature ...
Marginalized residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside are dying at more than eight times the national average, and treatable conditions are the greatest risk factors for mortality, researchers at the University of British Columbia have found.
In research outlined in the British Medical Journal Open, investigators recruited 371 study participants aged 23 to 72 from single room occupancy hotels and the Downtown Community Court. Over the course of nearly four years, 31 participants died--a mortality rate 8.29 times the average for Canadians of the same age and sex. For ...
Scientists believe that about 4 billion years ago, during a period called the Late Heavy Bombardment, the moon took a severe beating, as an army of asteroids pelted its surface, carving out craters and opening deep fissures in its crust. Such sustained impacts increased the moon's porosity, opening up a network of large seams beneath the lunar surface.
Now scientists at MIT and elsewhere have identified regions on the far side of the moon, called the lunar highlands, that may have been so heavily bombarded -- particularly by small asteroids -- that the impacts completely ...
